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KIEV PROTEST HEATING UP AS PROTESTERS SURROUND AMERICAN EMBASSY

By: Ivan Barić

Yesterday, the streets of Kiev were demolished by protesters fighting law forces. Images of Kiev had overflown the internet, as conflict continued deep into the night. However, there are some Ukrainians who are not very pleased with what is happening and are supporting Yanukovich’s idea of Ukraine being closer to Russia rather than the European Union. Some of them, gathered in a group named „Kievans for Clean City“, had organized a peaceful protest at the US Embassy in Kiev, surrounding it over the night. Group itself spoke against protests and violence, pleading US to stop the riots. Ivan Protsenko, who is one of the group’s leader, stated that the US has to put an end to such behaviour, accusing them for helping the opposition and therefore the riots as well: “The US is behind everything that is happening in Kiev’s downtown right now. The financing is coming from over there. This has to be stopped. That is what we came out here to say to the whole world: ‘US – stop! US – there needs to be peace in Ukraine’”.

Professor of history at Oxford University, Mark Almond, agrees with those claims, explaining what could be the syndrome of Ukrainian protests, if they were to continue: “So there is a danger that the extreme right that does exist, the extreme nationalists and indeed near Nazi elements, are actually serving the political purpose of the apparently moderate leaders. That is to say they want to overthrow the existing state, they don’t trust elections, because they fear that even if they win the elections there’s a sufficiently bigger body of support for Yanukovich that his political movement would survive and come back again as it did after the failures of the Orange revolution”. He accused the opposition leaders for serving the extreme-right, while calling themselves liberals. Furhtermore, Almond thinks that those leaders, such as Klitschko, Yatsenyuk, Parshenko, and the West, are playing with fire. “Vitaly Klitchko spoke in forked tongue: when he talks in English or German for the media he talks about the need for peaceful protests, the need for fresh elections; but he then says to his supporters that Yanukovich is like Ceaușescu and Gaddafi. If you say that the president of Ukraine is like Gaddafi, what you are saying is that he is a dictator that should be lynched as Gaddafi was at the end of 2011,” Almond said.

Nicolai N. Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, thinks that the biggest problem with the riots is the fact that the fascistic right will rise, and the Ukrainian authorities, Western governments and the US are not doing anything to stop that from happening. “They don’t take those ideas very seriously. Fascism seems like a historical footnote to them, they don’t realize that these sort of events could be repeated, particularly in governments like Ukraine that don’t have a long tradition of stable democratic politics,” he added.

A big qustionmark is set above the Ukraine right now, with the riots escalating even further, and the situation being very serious and complex. The EU and the US need to consolidate as fast as they can in order to solve the Ukrainian riddle, if they want to stop the „spillover effect“ in the neighbourhood, especially Belarus. Furthermore, the World has been hit by the fascist ideology once, and must not let those destructions to happen again, even as an isolated incidents in some Eastern European country. Situation demands fast and intelligent solution, aiming for the long-term peace, and global actors should work hard and cooperate in order to achieve it.